A decorative belt, a decorated sheet metal belt of Pomeranian type

It is an interesting and relatively rare head ornament made of narrow brown tape. Its ends are coiled into a tube, and two-thirds of its surface is covered with an ornament (punched from the bottom), consisting of zigzag motifs, volutes, and several linear transverse bands. Together with three spiral armlets and two spearheads, the band was a part of a bronze hoard discovered in 1875 in a church cemetery in Bonin while digging a grave. Schmidt, a local pastor, donated them to the collection of the Society of History and Antiquities of Pomerania (Towarzystwo Historii i Starożytności Pomorza) in Szczecin. In the 1920s, they were taken over by the newly established Pommersches Landesmuseum in Stettin (Polish: Pomorskie Muzeum Krajowe w Szczecinie; English: Pomeranian State Museum in Szczecin). The hoard remained there until 1944, when it was transported with other valuable relics deep into Germany to protect it from war destruction and looting. For a long time, it was considered lost. It returned to Szczecin in 2009 due to the Polish-German exchange of old archaeological collections. The Bonin deposit is an important archaeological find. It comes from the time when in large areas of Central Europe, the process of disappearance of the Unetice culture commenced and features typical for the communities of the so-called grave cultures, whose well-developed metallurgy had a strong influence on areas that were also within the range of the Nordic circle, appeared. That was the time (end of the 1st to mid 2nd Bronze Age, i.e., approx. 1700-1500 BC) when local bronzing began to develop under the influence of both cultural circles in Pomerania. The idea of decorating the head with a diadem probably originated in the Carpathian Basin. In Pomerania, decorative bronze bands connected with older periods of the Bronze Age are known primarily as hoards. In other areas of Poland, they are discovered mainly in graves.

Dorota Kozłowska